Agenda item

(Report to follow). This report will be published in a supplementary papers pack.

The Internal Audit Team Leader provided the Internal Audit Progress Report for Members’ consideration. It was noted that the update provided an update on progress with the internal audit plan up to 31^st December 2023, at which point 48 per cent of the plan for the year had been completed. This was an improvement on last year’s progress at this point.

It was explained that critical review audits were designed to add value to an evolving service area of the Council. Depending on the transformation that a service was experiencing at the time of a scheduled review, a decision was made by the internal auditor on the audit approach. Where a significant change was taking place due to transformation, restructuring, significant legislative updates, a critical review approach was used.

Following the report presentation, the Committee discussed a number of matters relating to the report with the following comments and answers to questions noted:

·       Critical Reviews – The Section 151 Officer highlighted that Accounts Receivable and General Ledger were the key internal audits form the Council’s perspective as they provided a reflection of the progress the Council was making in terms of the financial recovery programme.

·       Cyber security – It was reported that with respect to cyber security, following publicised cyber attacks on other councils, there was a proposal as part of the Tranche 2 of the Medium Term Financial Plan to increase the Council’s annual funding for cyber security. It was noted that as part of the Q2 Monitoring Report, an additional £50k was requested for upgrading and replacing tape drives. The tapes provided physical back up of IT data.

·       Allocation of internal audit days between Bromsgrove and Redditch – The Internal Audit Team Leader explained that the allocation of audit days was similar across the two councils but where necessary reflected the specific requirement of each council at given time. For areas such as Housing, Redditch required a greater allocation of internal audit delays as social housing was delivered in house. For other areas, such as ICT, the number of days allocated to Bromsgrove and Redditch was identical.

·       National Fraud Initiative (NFI) Returns – It was explained that this was a public-sector wide data matching exercise conducted by the Government’s Cabinet Office to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. As part of this, local authorities provided datasets on areas such as council tax and electoral register records to detect any data matches with other agencies and detect potential fraud. Members requested as an action that future iterations of the internal audit progress report include reporting of statistics on matches and frauds identified.

·       Fraud data – It was noted that it might act as a deterrent if data on the number and types of cases of fraud detected were included in Council reports. In terms of data sharing, it was reported by Officers that there remained some difficulties in sharing data across various public bodies, due to factors such as GDPR legislation.

·       Single person council tax discounts – It was noted that a significant number of all properties in Bromsgrove were single person homes, and single person discount on council tax applied. It was noted that the County Council had asked District Councils to be proactive in terms of investigating fraud in this area and chasing debt through capacity grid.

RESOLVED that the report be noted.